ZING POP CULTURE
THE PROBLEM
What can we do to make finding products easier for both seasoned and new customers?
BACKGROUND
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Zing is an Australian pop culture retailer
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They sell a wide range of merchandise from t-shirts to shot glasses
They have a competitive advantage in the fact that they are one of Australia’s well known pop culture retailers.
MY ROLE
Primarily UI Design
Research
TOOLS USED
Axure RP
Photoshop
Marvel
RESEARCH.
"THIS WEBSITE IS DATED" (Usability test)
After making a range of participants test the website, here are some key findings:
HAMBURGER MENU
Redundant Information
Category and franchise not identifiable right away from the hamburger menu
Majority of the participants found the website dated, very difficult to look at, busy, disorganised and not structured.
"VERY BUSY"
Colour Scheme / Layout
WEBSITE NAGIVATION
Heuristics
Clickable items would not click
Heuristics - unexpected processes, icons, colours representing elements
"HONESTly, I WOULDN'T WALK IN THERE"
(Contextual Inquiry / Interviews)
Majority of persons (72%) that were interviewed had brand awareness of ZiNG, but they feel that the website (and physical store) was not welcoming to them because of perceptions of elitism.
All of the participants that did the usability test, contextual inquiry & interviews felt like physical store the website reflected the website (54%). This was described as 'cluttered' and 'confusing'.
The Audience
Twenty two recruited from personal network & from forums such as reddit, whirlpool and gaming websites.
A QUOTE
"Zing just has this bit of an elitist vibe, and because I'm not super into pop culture, I would feel like an idiot walking in there"
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Majority of people preferred to sort by categories (eg. board games) and then franchise (Harry Potter)
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New categories like apparel, accessories were added
HOW DO OUR CUSTOMERS WANT TO SHOP? (Card Sort)
From all our research, we came up with a number of deliverables including a primary persona and user flow
meet low key lucas (Primary Persona)
ABOUT
Lucas is very casually into the world of pop culture, but he’s more of a sports fan. He’s seen every episode of Rick & Morty and even has some mercy; a hat and a pickle rick figure he keeps on his desk at work.
Lucas has been invited to a Game of Thrones themed work party and needs to dress the part. Lucas is aware of the show but does not watch it. He believes a simple T-shirt should suffice.
He figures, while he’s getting his T-shirt he’ll buy his girlfriend a product from the new Aladdin line.
"I need to find the Mrs something to get her to compliment the perfume I’ve bought for her birthday. Maybe she’ll like a pop vinyl?”
PAINS
Lucas wants to be able to locate his desired items and complete his transaction in a timely manner, having only looked at what he intended to buy.
GOALS
Lucas wants to be able to locate his desired items and complete his transaction in a timely manner, having only looked at what he intended to buy.
VISUAL DESIGN.
The two ways you can buy a shirt NOW (User Flow)
The two ways you can buy Game of Thrones t-shirt off the Zing website now.
This is shown through user flow (a) and user flow (b)
HOW THE DESIGN EVOLVED (Prototype Iteration)
USER FLOW A
CATEGORY / FRANCHISE
USER FLOW B
FRANCHISE / CATEGORY
CART FLOW
WIREFRAME TO TEST INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE AND LAYOUT
The first iteration was primarily focused on testing the information architecture.
Participants found the information architecture was clear, understandable and logical.
DESIGN IDEA 1
Respecting Zings Loyal Customers
To combat this problem, changing the colours to black and white vector logos and have them displayed on the page would be useful.
DESIGN IDEA 2
Matching the primary persona to Zing
To appeal to Lowkey Lewis, we wanted a clean plain text black logo franchise.
The concern here was that we would alienate the already loyal zing audience so we decided to test both design ideas.
THE WINNER IS... DESIGN 2
Respecting Zings loyal customers while appealing to a new target
After testing personas that we figured both fit in with Lowkey Lewis and Elite Edward (Zings loyal customer persona), we found that majority of people preferred design idea two. Our Elite Edward’s did not feel alienated by the design.
From our research, we found that this balances Zing’s pop culture legacy as well as appealing to a new target market for the future
BEFORE
LeTS start at the end...
AFTER
BEFORE & AFTER (High Fidelity Prototype - Axure)
BEFORE
AFTER
Main improvements (Layout of Information)
NEXT STEPS
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER